Today San Francisco-based Chronicled announced it has raised a $16 million Series A funding round led my Mandra Capital. Others participating included Streamlined Ventures, The Perkins Funds, Frank Fiore and David Aho. Chronicled is best known for the MediLedger Network which is working on a pharmaceutical supply chain solution to address US legal requirements for traceability of returns.

The company says the funds will be used to fund MediLedger and to set up an additional technology development office in Vancouver, Canada. Chronicled currently has a team of 50 which it plans to expand to 70 in the coming year.

MediLedger

The MediLedger Network includes a number of big names such as pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Genentech and major wholesalers Amerisource Bergen and McKesson.

MediLedger is in the pilot phase with plans to launch commercially this year. It doesn’t have a lot of leeway because the first legal requirements re drug returns have a deadline in November this year. An urgent priority is the integration of its network with solution and service providers, and some of the funds will be used for this. Additionally, it plans to add more protocols or services to the solution, including chargebacks, contracting and revenue management.

It’s headed by Susanne Somerville who was previously VP of Supply Chain at Genentech/Roche. She has a clear vision about how blockchain can benefit the pharma industry. “We don’t want governance to decide the industry business rules or interpretation of business rules. We literally want companies to come with the rules they want, and we just implement them in software and code,” said Somerville. Ledger Insights previously wrote in depth about the MediLedger project.

The company uses a private version of Ethereum and extensively uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs to enable privacy.